Above me, Seagulls patter my metal roof and screech their hunger to anyone who will listen. The fishing boats are returning to port, and soon, the gulls will have plenty of bones and bellies to feast on when the fishermen empty their ice holds and process their catches. It’s been a week since I’ve set my nets in the water, a week since our infant son lay as still as a porcelain doll on the birthing room warmer.
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction
The Whale in the Channel
Addy is sheltered in our bedroom, begging God to turn back time and give our boy a second chance. I sit at our kitchen table and watch the front room curtain billow on a breeze that carries the low-tide stench of sulfur into our home. Above me, Seagulls patter my metal roof and screech their hunger to anyone who will listen. The fishing boats are returning to port, and soon, the gulls will have plenty of bones and bellies to feast on when the fishermen empty their ice holds and process their catches. It’s been a week since I’ve set my nets in the water, a week since our infant son lay as still as a porcelain doll on the birthing room warmer. Addy’s hands trembled when she reached out from her hospital bed to hold him, and it stole away the gadget in my stomach that spins when I feel. I stand to check on Addy, walk toward our bedroom, but a frantic bang-bang-bang on my back door stops me mid-step.
“Damnit,” I mumble and plod across the kitchen. When I open the door, Patrick is pacing across my deck. He’s short and plump, and his almond-shaped eyes are round with excitement.
“There’s a fish in the channel, Sean!” he howls.
“Whoa! Slow down, Pal.”
Patrick stretches his stubby arms wide. “It’s as b-b-big as a bathtub!”
I hesitate. Sometimes, Patrick mixes up what’s real. “Hey, Bud,” I slip out on the deck, closing the door behind me. “Is your Dad around?” I whisper.
“He had a ac-ac-accident in his PJ’s this morning,” Patrick says. “But don’t tell him I told you.”
“Not a word,” I say.
I look beyond my deck to see if someone else is around to help Patrick. There are twelve stilt houses on The Brook – all single-story and built on piles to keep them above floods – and someone is usually fixing a boat at the dock or in their yard mending fishing nets or sorting tackle. But not today. Even the gulls pacing my roof have quieted. I rub the growing knot in my back.
“Okay, Pal,” I motion with my head. “C’mon in. Sit. Talk to me.”
He shuffles inside and sits. My little terrier, Barney, hears the commotion and hobbles into the kitchen.
“Hi, B-B-Barney Rubble. Where’s Fred Flintstone?” Patrick grins, scratching the base of the dog’s ears.
“Patrick,” I press. “The fish in the channel?”
“Oh, right,” he says. “I was w-w-walking home from town and heard splashing, and I looked into the channel, and Boom! There it was.”
“You sure it’s not just a mackerel or bluefish strayed from the school?”
He scoffs. “You think I don’t know what a mackerel looks like?”
His fingers tap the top of the table. Then he leans forward, lowering his voice. “Is Addy here?”
“She’s here, but she’s resting,” I say, wondering if she’s listening behind the bedroom door. Maybe Patrick’s fish story is just an excuse to say ‘Hi” to Addy. She’s been like Patrick’s second mother since his real mom died a few years ago.
“I’m sorry about your baby, Sean,” Patrick looks at me and mumbles. “Especially for Addy ’cause she’s the m-m-mom.”
“Thanks, Pal,” I avoid his eyes and squeeze his shoulder. “I’ll let Addy know you offered your respects.”
I grab a pair of boots, sit at the kitchen table, and wriggle into them. I haven’t worn them in a couple of days, and they feel like a couple of old friends. Patrick’s sneaker laces are loose, and I kneel before him.
“Where’s your slip-ons?” I gather his frayed laces and start tying a slip knot.
“I could only f-f-find one of them this morning.”
“Stay still. Your leg’s flopping like a fish on a deck,” I slap his swaying shin. “Did your Dad feed you this morning?”
“I told you he’s got the runs. I made cereal with milk by myself.”
“Your belly full?” I finish tying his shoes.
He nods his head.
“Good. Grab one of those containers off the counter,” I say, pointing to the mishmash of plates and dishes that friends and neighbors had been dropping off since we got home from the hospital. Mercy meals instead of celebratory; Who’d have guessed it? “If your Dad’s not feeling well, he won’t want to cook. Let’s go have a peek at your bathtub-sized fish.”
Outside, I pull a tarp from the pile of tackle in my sideyard, and Patrick and I make our way down the stone-dust road. The Brook is no bigger than a city block; its channel just a stone’s throw away. Patrick lives two houses down and runs the casserole inside. He’s out in the flash of a fish’s tail. When we reach the channel, I stand atop the bank and stare into the water.
“Jesus Christ….” I whisper.
Below us, in the channel’s knee-deep water, a gray pilot whale calf about eight feet long sways in the current. The top one-third of its body protrudes above the surface. I’ve never seen a whale this far up in the channel, and I slide down the bank, kick off my boots, and step into the water.
“Hey, little fella,” I coo. The calf’s tail twitches, but it remains calm. I wonder if being lost and confused feels the same way for him as it does me.
Patrick sloshes into the surf and stands beside me. “What is it?” Patrick asks.
“It’s a whale,” I say. “And by the looks of those birth stripes on its back, a young one.”
“I t-t-told you it was big!” Patrick says.
“Yeah, you did,” I nodded.
“What are we going to d-do, Sean?”
“I’m not sure,” I say, and stand straight, shield my eyes against the afternoon sunlight so I can read the tide marker lashed to a post on the nearby dock. The tide is ebbing fast. In fifteen minutes, the channel will be too shallow, and – even if the calf remembers how to backtrack to the bay – he won’t be able to swim out without grounding.
“How’d you get in here?” I hunch down and ask the calf. Like all pilot whales, it wears a perpetual smile. I stroke its head. “You’re a cheeky little fellow, aren’t you?” I draw a deep breath and straighten up.
Beyond the channel, the unmistakable blow of another whale bellows in the bay. The calf thrashes his tail and propels himself further up onto the gravel.
“No, stop! Not that way,” I say quickly and jump out in front of it.
“I bet that’s his m-m-mama,” Patrick scrunches his face. “Why doesn’t she come and get him?”
“She can’t,” I glance out to the bay. “The canal’s too shallow. Tell you what, Patrick.” I wade a complete circle around the calf. “Let’s see if we can get that tarp beneath him and spin him around.” I trudge back to shore and pick up my canvas tarp.
While I hunch in the surf and lift on the calf’s soft underbelly, Patrick kneels beside him and slips the tarp between the calf’s stomach and the rocky channel bottom. Lifting and pulling from opposite sides, we shimmy the tarp into a makeshift body-sling and inch the calf into an about-face from shore.
“He’s pointed the right way,” I say, “but we got to get him deeper.”
I clear away some of the sharper rocks in front of the calf, then slosh back and bunch both corners of the tarp above the center of the calf’s back. I tell Patrick to stand behind the flipper on the opposite side.
“When I lift on this tarp,” I say to Patrick, “you push. Easy, though. He’s got to be three hundred pounds, and we’ll shred his belly into sushi if we’re not careful.”
The going is clumsy. Occasionally, a blast of air from the calf’s blowhole startles us. But after a while, we find a rhythm. Once we get the calf into three feet of water, it floats over the path I cleared in the rocky bed. Another blow bellows in the bay, and I see a light mist hovering near the entrance to the channel.
“I know what you’re going through, mama,” I whisper to the mother whale. “Try to hold on. We’re doing our best.”
I look at Patrick. “Ready?” I ask, and he nods.
“One, two, three,” I count, and we simultaneously launch the whale toward the exit canal.
The calf drifts on the top of the water like a giant rubber float, and its fins twitch. It lazily slaps its tail on the surface as if it might submerge, and then it jolts, thrashes, and spins into a tight about-face. It rockets toward us like a torpedo. We scatter. The calf grinds to a stop in the shallow water, and I take a deep breath.
Patrick’s eyes widen. “What d-d-do we do now?”
I rub the back of my neck. “You go to your house, Pal,” I say. “Tell your Dad to call 9-1-1 and tell them where we are and what’s happening.”
Patrick runs, bent-headed, up the road. The late afternoon sun hangs a few inches above the landline, and I wade back to the calf and caress his head. I whisper: “I’m sorry. You’re as lost as me, and I don’t know how to save you. I’m sorry.”
*
When the fire department arrives, I sit on shore and squeeze into my wet boots. The Captain scrambles down the bank and looks at me. He’s spooked.
“I signed up to eat smoke, not fish,” he cracks.
I look out at the whale. “I’ve got ropes, tarps, hot coffee if it helps,” I tell him. “I’m in that house there,” I point.
He nods and stares at the calf. He lets out a long breath and pulls out his cell phone. “Portland’s got people for this type of thing,” he mumbles, scrolling through his contacts.
When I get back to my yard, I glance at Patrick, still down at the channel, pestering a fireman suiting up in his turnout gear. Patrick’s talking fast and hand-gesturing, and the fireman nods, backing away – half listening and half trying to get to the channel. I almost feel bad; Patrick’s eagerness to help is going to wear them down. I trudge up my back steps and into my kitchen. Addy is sitting at the table in her pajamas, squinting at the glowing screen of her laptop.
“You’re up,” I say.
“What if it was that Indian dish we ate last week?” she sniffles at me. “Spicy food makes babies move. I just read that.”
“I don’t know, Hon,” I sit beside her.
“Or stress.” She closes the laptop. A ‘v-shaped’ vein pulses in her forehead. “We’d just found out that your boat engine needed a rebuild. What if he felt that? What if the cord…?”
“Stop!” My voice cracks. I clear my throat. “We’re never going to figure this out, okay?”
“Stop?” Addy cocks her head. “How do I stop, Sean? How do I get off the sinking ship?”
I don’t answer. She sits and stares. Barney hobbles through the hall doorway, across the kitchen floor, and gazes at Addy. His muzzle is gray, and his eyes are milky with cataracts. He’s usually my pal, but he’s stayed close to Addy the past few days. I scoop him up and walk across the kitchen. It’s ironic. We wondered for nine months if Barney would live to see the baby.
“You’re a good dog,” I rub his head and tell him. I peek outside the window over the sink. A couple of our neighbors are strolling down the stone dust road toward the channel.
“News travels fast around here,” I mutter.
“What news?” Addy asks.
“There’s a whale in the channel,” I say, almost to myself. “A calf.”
“A baby?” Addy stands and moves to the window. She watches the gathering crowd, then turns and asks me: “Have you ever seen a whale on The Brook?”
“No,” I say.
She stares out the window again. I place Barney on the floor, walk to the table and sit. Addy turns and says. “I’ve been praying for God to send me a sign that he’s safe, Sean. How can this not mean something?”
“Maybe,” I mumble, rubbing the back of my neck and hearing little bones clicking into place. I can think of a dozen reasons the whale is in the channel that don’t include God. I look down at Barney to avoid Addy’s eyes.
She looks back out the window. “I’m sure this means something,” she whispers. After a minute, she turns and walks toward the bedroom. She stops and looks at me when she gets to the door.
“I know you think I’m foolish,” she tells me. I don’t say anything. She stares a moment longer, presses her lips together, then closes our bedroom door behind her. I lean forward and mash the heel of my palms into my eyes.
*
It will be dark in an hour. I stand, cross the kitchen, lean over the sink, and scooch aside the curtain. More neighbors are walking down the stone-dust road toward the channel – husbands, wives, kids- and a couple of cars from the town proper turn onto our connecting road and park along the seagrass berm. I’m not surprised.
A whale will always attract folks. They’re gentle, humble souls, and a warm, affectionate feeling roils your gut when you look into one of their big, inquisitive eyes. They hold your stare and study every inch of your face like they’re trying to remember if you’ve ever met. It’s always electrifying to see a whale in the wild and troubling when one of them is in danger. They’re large and heavy and difficult to help. If, when I die, I discover that the God Addy prays to exists, I might work up the courage to ask him why he didn’t think to immortalize his most astonishing creature.
Some days, when dragging my nets across the offshore ledges and bluffs, I’ll be as tickled as a hook-spitting fish to spot a pod of minkes or pilots breaching alongside my boat. If the fishing is slow or I feel like taking a break, I’ll sit on the side rail and listen to them click and whistle and grunt to one another and invent stories that they’re chatting about the weather, or the water temperature, or how delicious that last school of fish tasted. Damn, if I sometimes don’t have to squash the urge to jump over the rail and join them.
I hope the calf in the channel is still smiling, and I close the curtain, walk across the kitchen, and open the oven door. The casserole one of Addy’s teacher-friends dropped earlier is bubbling, and I turn down the heat. When I shut the oven, the swooshing door flutters the handmade good-luck cards we stuck on the refrigerator over the past month. Addy’s first-grade students made them while counting down the days until her expected delivery.
I dig out a shoebox from the hall closet, pull each card from the refrigerator, and carefully stack them in the box. We opened them during dinner the past few weeks. All day while I fished, I’d look forward to it. Mostly because I liked watching the way Addy opened them. She’d tenderly rub each envelope with her fingertips as if the card inside was the baby inside her. “My sweet little Graham” or “My little blue-eyed Rowan,” she’d smile sadly and whisper to the sender of each card. “You’re all much too kind to me.”
The words on the cards were often misspelled—girl was ‘gurl’ and friend was ‘frend.’ Sometimes, I could read the sentences from left to right. But more often, the words were scattered and indecipherable, as if they were written individually, shaken up in a cup, and spilled across the card.
I pluck my favorite off the door, a handmade stick-figure crayon drawing on textured yellow paper. A man, a woman, and a toddler are holding hands in front of a house with a smoke-churning chimney. A bright sun with a smiley face hangs in the sky behind them.
When we opened it, I asked Addy: “Why does every kid born draw it this way? And who’s the loaded pistol that wrote this note below the drawing?”
“I want you to meet her someday.” Addy gushed. “I love her! She’s so much fun to be around!”
I smile sadly and rub the card. The writing on it said: ‘call me wen you hav baby…I go to bed at 8 o’klok but tell my mom, and she wul wake me if it’s later. Don’t call Alice. I’ll call her. Make sure you don’t call Alice.
*
I’m drowning. I sit on the edge of my back deck and wonder if Addy and I will always feel like we’ve lost something. We knew it was going to be a boy. I would teach him to bait a hook, adjust the carburetor on my boat so the diesel fuel didn’t burn too rich, and how to stay warm in a cold blind after setting his string of decoys and waiting for the ducks to swoop in.
Addy’s dreams for him were different: “Ooh no,” she’d turn up her nose in mock snobbery when I told her I would have him fishing with me in diapers. “He’s going to be right on Mama’s hip at library story-time or maybe that new dinosaur museum they just opened in Portland.” She teased me that my Captain days were over and I’d better get used to playing first mate. I liked it when she would end her ribbing with a slow wink of her eye or a laugh aimed more at herself than it was at me. Every day, she transformed into a perfect and glowing mixture of motherly love and an even more irresistible wife and woman. One night, we sat on the couch, and she whispered: “I can’t wait to see what he loves: Science, sports, one of the arts. I’ll help him chase it. And when he falls, I’ll help him stand up until he gets it.”
I look across the marsh—gusts of air bend random swathes of seagrass. The earth is gasping. I close my eyes and match my breath to the wind’s rhythm. My mind quiets, and I imagine him, a baby crawling through the marsh grass. And as he moves closer, he ages. He stands up, a wobbly, smiling toddler, his eyes full of curiosity. Closer now, he’s a schoolboy, brown-haired and green-eyed like Addy; his skin suntanned the color of beach sand. Closer still, he’s a smiling teenager with a sinewy wrestler’s build and a chipped tooth. Was it a bad-hop ground ball that chipped his tooth? Or maybe a schoolyard fistfight defending a weaker friend from a bully like I did years ago when classmates picked on Patrick.
I open my eyes and look at the sky for a long time. The sun hovers just above the horizon, its rays spreading like the petals on a sunflower. A wayward cloud absorbs an orange hue from the sunlight and floats above the distant tree line like a flaming mythical bird. I know why Addy prays. She feels hopeless, and words don’t make it go away. She’s no different from the whale in the channel. Even if he doesn’t exist, God is the only comfort.
Years ago, I dragged my nets across Jeffrey’s Ledge just after Addy and I had married. There were miles of open, empty water around me. I leaned over the rail to untangle an outrigger and tumbled overboard when a swell lurched the boat. My boat had drifted fifteen feet away when I popped to the surface. I stuck my face in the water and swam. When I raised my head and looked up, the boat was no nearer.
Over and over, I swam. And when my arms and legs finally gave out, when my fear turned to exhaustion, I trod water and begged a God I didn’t believe in to let me live. I told him Addy was a girl who could have chosen any man she wanted, and she chose me. That the marsh still renewed me with its twisting channels and tidal pools teeming with life. And – when the fishing was slow, or the weather forced me to make the long trip home early – I’d thought a great deal about who created the ocean and all of its miraculous creatures and concluded that – whatever it was – it couldn’t have been born of flesh: No human sculptor could chisel life into a dolphin leaping above the waves. No painter could tint the ocean’s texture and depth. No writer could aptly describe the sensation of being immersed in water, suspended in a brutal and exotic world that connects earth and air.
When I finished, a crosscurrent pushed the boat into my lap. After a few weeks, I convinced myself that luck, not my prayer or God’s hand, found me that day. But there have been moments when I lie awake at night and wonder.
Behind me, footsteps clomp across my deck, and I turn around. Patrick is hurrying toward me. “I know h-h-how to make Addy n-n-not be sad,” he stutters.
“Do you?” I grin at his childlike optimism.
“She can c-c-cook and clean for me and Dad,” he proudly proclaims.
I let out a long breath. I don’t know whether to laugh or scream. “I can’t do this with you right now, Bud,” I rub my face in my hands. I stand up.
“It’ll w-w-work, Sean,” he assures me. “I promise…”
“Go on home, Patrick,” I cut him short. I walk toward my back door. “Tell your Dad your fix for Addy, and he’ll explain why you shouldn’t talk like that.”
“But I know…”
“Enough, already!” I snap. “Leave me be, you understand? I’ve got my own troubles. I can’t listen to your boneheaded ideas,” I turn, pushing through my back door and leaving him alone on my deck.
*
Darkness drifts in from the bay and settles onto The Brook. The calf has been stranded for at least six hours, probably more. I open my bedroom door. A slice of light from the kitchen illuminates Addy. She is lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“All good?” I whisper.
She nods.
“Supper’s ready.”
When she walks into the kitchen, she stops when she sees the cards missing from outside the refrigerator. She crosses her arms and turns away.
“It was time to take them down,” I mutter and scoop a helping of fish casserole onto two plates. “C’mon. Let’s eat on the porch.”
“I don’t want to see anyone, Sean.”
“Me neither,” I carry the plates past her. “I lowered the front blinds. I want to check out what’s happening at the channel.”
I place our plates on the small table, and Barney hobbles onto the porch and slumps across Addy’s slipper-ed feet. She slides her plate closer and absentmindedly mashes a chunk of fish between the prongs of her fork.
“You ought to eat,” I tell her. We avoid each other’s eyes.
She stabs a potato chunk, raises it halfway to her mouth, and then sets it back on her plate. I turn and stare out the side screen window. Most everyone from The Brook is there. A few men are drinking beer, and the women are chatting. There’s a bunch of kids running around in a field of seagrass. A couple of fire engines have their headlights shining into the channel.
“Will they save him?” Addy asks quietly.
“It’s hard to tell. The tide has bottomed out by now and will soon start rising. I’m sure that’s what they’re counting on.”
“I dozed off and dreamed about him. He’s all alone.”
“No,” I turn and shake my head. “His mom’s out in the bay. Patrick and I heard her looking for him. The calf heard her, too.”
“Oh, no,” she whispers. “She must be losing her mind.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I would guess she’s plenty worried.”
After dinner, I clear the plates and bring them to the kitchen. Addy didn’t eat. When I return to the porch, she is kneeling on the end of the sofa with her face pressed against the window screen. I sit down and pull Barney into my lap. “How did you get so good?” I rub his head and ask him.
Addy turns and looks at us. “I don’t know what to tell the kids when I return to work.”
“I’m sure they know by now,” I say.
“Yes. It’s just that kids don’t always process things in the same way adults do. I feel damaged, like I’ve done something wrong.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Addy,” I tell her.
She stays quiet. Outside, one of the police cars pulls away from the berm. And then a fire engine. I stand up and peer out.
“Something’s going on down there,” I murmur.
A couple of our neighbors wander up the stone dust road. I see Earl Crawford alone, trekking toward his place at the end of the road.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to Addy, pushing open the porch door.
Hey, Earl!” I holler from our front yard. “Hold up a minute, will ya?”
I return to the porch a few minutes later and lower the blinds over the side window. I run my hand through my hair.
“What’d he say?” Addy puts her hand to her mouth.
“The calf’s had enough,” I tell Addy. “They have a team coming down from Portland. They’re going to euthanize him and tow his body out of there in the morning.”
*
I wake up. Barney raises his head from the foot of the bed, offers a half-bark, and plops his head back down. The numbers on my alarm clock read twelve-twenty-seven, and Addy’s side of the bed is empty.
“Addy!” I call, but she doesn’t answer. I throw on my pants and shirt and hear a creaking noise outside. I open my back door. Patrick is sitting on the edge of my deck, his back toward me, staring out at the full moon reflecting itself on a tidal pool surrounded by seagrass.
“Patrick,” I rub my face in my hands and mumble. “What are you doing?”
He scrambles to his feet. “Are you still m-m-mad at me, Sean?” he worries. I can’t remember ever yelling at him all the years we’ve been friends.
I shake my head.
“You think I w-w-wanted Addy to cook and c-c-clean for me and Dad.” He rocks back and forth.
“Relax, Patrick,” I tell him. “I’m not mad.”
“I s-s-said it wrong,” he starts to cry. “I just meant Addy should h-h-help someone. It m-m-makes her happy. I see it in h-h-her eyes when she h-h-helps me and Dad.”
My stomach swirls. I’m a sail with no wind. I should have known Patrick’s solution was well-intentioned. “Hey! It’s okay,” I say and walk across the deck. “This is my fault,” I squeeze his shoulder. “I’m sorry for how I acted earlier, Pal.”
He nods and wipes his running nose with his forearm. “Addy s-s-said it was a fine idea,” he lowers his eyes. “She said she already f-f-felt less sad.”
“Addy? You saw her?”
“Yes,” he says. “A little w-w-while ago. After I told her my idea, she said she w-w-wanted to go down and see the whale.”
“Addy’s at the channel?” I hear my voice rising.
Patrick nods.
“Wait here, Patrick,” I whisper, sprinting down the road.
When I get to the channel, there’s a pickup parked on the landing with the words PORTLAND MARINE CONTROL on the side door. At the foot of the bank, a man and a woman are leaning over a small case and loading it with medical supplies. I scurry down the incline.
“My wife…?” I ask breathlessly.
The man straightens up and motions toward the water with his head. I walk to the shoreline. The moon casts a ghostly light that bathes the channel. Addy is kneeling in thigh-high water in her flannel pajamas. Her face is turned away from the shore. Her head is leaning against the calf’s body, and she’s gently rubbing her hand along its slick skin.
The man walks over and stands beside me. He looks out at Addy. “She showed up just before we started,” he says softly.
I stare out at her. “What is she doing…?” I whisper.
“She’s comforting him,” the man says in a hushed tone as if we are talking inside a church.
I turn and look at him.
“The calf was agitated, and we couldn’t get a line into him,” he says. “When your wife got here, you’d have thought she was singing a lullaby the way the calf quieted down.”
The man walks back to his case and picks it up. He and the woman climb up the bank to their truck.
I wade into the surf. When I get to Addy, she is still kneeling, caressing the whale.
“Don’t be afraid, sweetheart,” she whispers. “I’m here, I’m right here.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. She looks up and blinks, and I help her to her feet. “I woke up, and you weren’t beside me,” I say.
“The mother,” she says dreamily. “She wouldn’t have wanted him to be alone.”
I pull her close. Her cheek rests against my chest, and she wraps her arms around me.
“She’s going to keep searching for him, isn’t she?” she whispers.
“Yes,” I say softly. “She won’t give up so easily.”
“Oh, Sean,” she cries.
I hold her tight. “Her pod will know how to help her,” I whisper. “They’re her family.”
She gently lifts her face off my chest and brushes a strand of hair back. “She’ll be okay?”
I think before I speak. I want to get this right. “When she’s ready,” I say, “she’ll be a whale again. She’ll hunt and breach and glide through the water like a schooner on a soft breeze.”
She smiles sadly and turns toward the bay. Above us, the moon is surrounded by a million winking stars, illuminating a flock of geese flying in V-formation. I close my eyes and imagine the formation is the tip of a giant spear that has roamed the heavens since time began. When I open my eyes, the spear tip alters course and plunges into the night sky’s singular cloud.
On the shore around us, the seagrass dances to a tune only the wind can play. I glance down and touch the calf – its body swaying on the gentle flow of the incoming tide – and am filled with a humble relief that it is finally pain-free. I sometimes wonder if the heartache that connects us happens by design. I am occasionally gifted a moment of luminous perception that a mysterious force exists, and it wants us to discover that – during our loneliest and most difficult times – we have someplace to go.
Addy turns away from the bay and looks at me.
“C’mon,” I say. “Let’s get you home and into some dry clothes.”
She nods and leans over the calf. “You meant something, little one,” she caresses its head. “Your life meant something.”
She kisses the whale’s cheek, and we wade back to shore. We climb up the bank and onto the stone dust. Up ahead, the light from our kitchen window radiates a warm glow.
Edward Boyle is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing. His work has appeared in several literary magazines, and one of his stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.